Gov.-elect Bill Ritter couldn’t quit smiling Wednesday as he and his team celebrated their smashing Election Day victory.

But “Bill the Energizer Turtle” – a nickname bestowed on him by the campaign’s pollster – didn’t quit working either. He kept going and going and going.

Ritter took the first step in grasping the reins of power Wednesday by announcing his transition team, a troika of Democratic power brokers and a Republican former state senator.

Lawyer James Lyons, banker Daniel Yohannes and former state Sen. Norma Anderson will head up the effort to hire as many as 100 new administrators for state government departments and agencies.

“When the inauguration comes, we will be ready to have a government in place,” Ritter said in a sun-drenched midday news conference on the west steps of the Capitol. He was surrounded by family, friends and supporters.

Before Ritter announced the transition team, his top campaign officers released previously confidential polling data suggesting illegal immigration was not a factor in the race.

Throughout the campaign, Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez and his supporters hammered Ritter as too soft on illegal immigration.

While most poll respondents gave Beauprez high marks for being “tough on illegal immigration,” the issue did not change their overall views of the candidates.

On Oct. 29, 47 percent of the respondents said Beauprez was much better or somewhat better at being tough on illegal immigration. On the same date, Ritter’s favorability rating – and Beauprez’s unfavorability rating – rose to their highest levels.

Sixty-one percent of the respondents said they had a favorable opinion of Ritter, and 50 percent said they had an unfavorable opinion of Beauprez.

With such numbers in hand, Ritter’s campaign could afford to move ahead with its other plans, said campaign manager Greg Kolomitz.

The campaign took aim at counties that supported Referendum C – last year’s ballot measure that lets state government keep more tax money. Ritter toured those communities to emphasize the importance of “investing” by state government and to convince voters that he was the best candidate for them. Beauprez opposed the measure.

The campaign withstood the vaunted Republican 96-hour get- out-the-vote effort by having its own plan to get voters to the polls. “We have a 96-day plan,” said Sheila MacDonald, deputy manager, referring to an effort to persuade supporters to vote by absentee ballot.

Everything was connected – policymaking led to poll-taking led to hand-shaking led to fundraising. That steady-as-he-goes approach earned him the turtle nickname, but the pollster found that it also earned him the respect of voters who preferred a candidate with “vision” rather than “experience.”

Pollster David Beattie said, “This is a campaign that had a policy staff before it had a polling firm.”

Ritter didn’t pull into his shell Wednesday because the transition team has a lot of work to do.

“The governor and I spoke this morning,” Ritter said during a news conference on the west steps of the state Capitol. “He said each of his cabinet members put together a transition memo.

“He said they are stacked 10 feet deep in (chief of staff) Bob Lee’s office,” Ritter said. “So we’ll look at where they are, and we’ll ask the serious questions about how they should look in the 21st century.”

Ritter said he formed a transition team to begin sketching out a plan in early October – not a move of overconfidence but rather a realistic preparation for a time-consuming handover of government control.

“The former chief of staff of Gov. (Bill) Owens and I spoke quite a while ago – it was probably February – and he said, whether you’re 10 points behind, 10 points ahead, no matter where you are, you cannot wait until Nov. 7 or Election Day to begin the transition process,” Ritter said.

Ritter’s team unites influential Democrats with a high-profile former Republican legislator – an approach that Ritter said shows he is committed to finding common ground in making policy decisions.

Yohannes, a Democrat who gave $1,000 to Ritter’s campaign, is president and chief executive of M&R Investments LLC. Previously, he was vice chairman of US Bank for consumer banking.

Lyons, who contributed $1,000 to Ritter’s campaign and $1,500 to the state Democratic Party, previously worked on Bill Clinton’s presidential transition team in 1992.

Anderson, a Republican who has served as majority leader in the House and as co-majority leader in the Senate, said she received a call from Ritter on Nov. 6.

Anderson would not say whether she voted for Ritter, a former Denver district attorney but both were strong supporters of Referendum C.

“I worked with Gov.-elect Ritter on crime legislation,” Anderson said. “I’ve known Bill Ritter for quite some time. I know what a good person he is. To give balance to his transition team, I am honored to do it.”

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